Take Creativity Wherever You Go:Adobe Creative Cloud Updates

In the biggest release since CS6, Adobe unveiled major updates to Creative Cloud including 14 new versions of desktop apps, four new mobile apps, and new creative Adobe-branded hardware for use with tablets, a first for the company. The updates and new apps shape a unified creative experience between desktops, tablets and phones.

Among the pile of desktop app updates, designers will find the new tools in Photoshop CC include Blur Gallery, effects for creating a sense of motion; Focus Mask, a tool that makes portrait shots with shallow depth of field stand out; and new Content Aware Capabilities.

Illustrator CC will include Live Shapes to transform rectangles into complex shapes and back, as well as faster rendering of graphics on Windows with an Adobe-certified NVIDIA graphics card.

Web designers will see updates to Dreamweaver CC, including the ability to look at markup in a document using Element Quick View. This allows web developers to easily see and modify the HTML structure of pages.

These updates are in addition to the previously announced features in Adobe's video tools, including Premiere Pro CC's live text templates and masking and new keying effects in After Effects CC. An improved Direct Link between Premiere and SpeedGrade CC was also announced along with enhanced multitrack tools in Audition CC.

"We've taken bold steps with this milestone release, fast-tracking new features to industry-defining tools like Photoshop and InDesign, while introducing mobile apps that turn tablets into indispensable creative tools," said David Wadhwani, senior vice president, Digital Media, Adobe.

These mobile apps for iPad are Adobe Sketch, Line, and Photoshop Mix, and they work with Adobe's new hardware: Adobe Ink, a digital pen; and Adobe Slide, a digital ruler. These new apps are in addition to the recently released Lightroom mobile for iPad, which is now available on iPhone too. The apps were created using a new Adobe Creative Software Development Kit (SDK) which will help with the development of third party mobile apps. The SDK is currently in private beta but will be released in the coming months.

Adobe Photoshop Mix

Adobe Sketch is an iPad app for free-form drawing which brings sketching and community together, getting live feedback as you work. Adobe Line is the first iPad app for precision drawing and drafting. And the Photoshop Mix app allows for compositing and masking on the iPad, including Content Aware Fill and the ability to save PSD files to continue editing on Photoshop CC on a desktop.

Adobe Ink and Adobe Slide are Adobe's first branded hardware. Adobe Ink is a three-sided hydro-formed aluminum stylus for iPads running iOS7. It's built using the Adonit Pixelpoint technology, which means the fine-tipped pressure sensitive pen is sensitive for precision drawing and won't be disrupted by your hand on the iPad's touch screen. Adobe Slide is a digital ruler and companion to Ink, enabling precision sketching on the iPad.

Adobe Ink and Adobe Slide are Adobe's first branded hardware.

"Today we're introducing cutting-edge drawing tools that can carry the designer's Creative Cloud identity, provide access to favorite color themes, and can even copy and paste across devices," said Scott Belsky, vice president of product and creative community for Adobe.

Tying all the desktop apps, mobile apps, and hardware together with Creative Cloud services is a creative profile, where users can access and manage everything from files to photos and colors. A Creative Cloud app for iPhone and iPad will allow users to manage files and assets from their mobile device.

And re-vamping their offerings for larger facilities, Adobe has new solutions for enterprises and educational institutions. Creative Cloud for enterprise is designed specifically for large-scale software developments with expanded options for deployment and a dashboard for managing users. For education, a device-based licensing offer for classrooms and labs will allow multiple users to access software on a device instead of tying it to an individual with an Adobe ID.

And for photography app users, a new Creative Cloud Photography plan will include Lightroom 5 and Photoshop CC for $9.99 per month.

Updates to Creative Cloud's desktop tools are available to download now at no cost to current members, and mobile apps are free to everyone. Adobe Ink and Slide are available for the US on Adobe.com for $199.99.

Academy Award-nominated director Christopher Nolan has referred to his film Dunkirk in IMAX as “virtual reality without the goggles,” so when it came time to build Save Every Breath: The Dunkirk VR Experience, the team at Practical Magic knew that the stakes were higher than usual. Creative COW Associate Editor Kylee Peña speaks with Practical Magic's Matt Lewis and Adobe Director of Immersive Chris Bobotis about the challenge of creating a tie-in worthy of a supremely immersive Academy Award-nominated Best Picture, the future of user interfaces, the role of community in storytelling, and the new ways that young creators are driving technology.

The recent addition of Motion Graphics templates to Adobe Stock in the Creative Cloud offers immediate access to over 1000 templates for title screens, lower thirds, and transitions, with more to follow, created by some of the world’s leading motion graphics artists and mograph pioneers Digital Juice. Motion Graphics templates inside Adobe Stock also offer a new avenue for Creative Cloud artists to monetize their work, by offering their own motion graphics templates for sale. This is a multi-faceted story that dives deep into multiple parts of a rapidly expanding Creative Cloud ecosystem that doesn’t handily lend itself to brief soundbites. It does, however, lend itself to song. Everybody sing along!

You might be excused for thinking that, barely a month since Adobe announced massive updates to their Creative Cloud suite at IBC, there might not be much more to add, except that there’s no way that Adobe would bring 10,000 people to San Diego for the Adobe MAX creativity conference and not have some truly compelling new news. Read on for news of new design tools for app prototyping, photorealistic comping/visualization, the new Adobe Sensei framework of intelligent services built into the entire Creative Cloud Platform, the integration of Reuters video and photography into Adobe Stock’s editorial collection, and, of particular interest to folks working in web video, the introduction of the new Social Publishing Panel within Adobe Premiere Pro.

Adobe has announced a a new family of mobile apps, tied together by a new Creative Profile, to seamlessly integrate into existing desktop tools as part of the latest Creative Cloud release. The CC update, expected to be available today, also includes major new features for the desktop family of tools including Photoshop, Illustrator After Effects and Premiere.

Adobe has announced updates to the professional video tools in their Creative Cloud, featuring timesaving enhancements to media and project management, increased support for new codecs and display technologies, and refinements to everyday editorial tasks in response to some long-standing user requests.

Adobe Creative Cloud's video applications create a post-production pipeline for all types of video content creators, and major updates to that toolkit aim to make content creation faster, easier, and more exciting.

Adobe sat down with the multi-talented creatives behind Scruffy.TV and talked about why they decided to move to an all Adobe workflow based on Adobe Creative Cloud. A recent endeavor, Flight Club (a spoof on the movie Fight Club), was their first collaborative experience working with an end-to-end Adobe pipeline using Adobe Creative Cloud.